A mother of five held at an ICE detention center in Texas was taken to the emergency room in “excruciating” pain, weeks after she was refused a CT scan by center officials for a lump in her chest, according to her attorney.
The woman, Hayam El Gamal, has been pleading for medical attention for the abnormal growth, which has caused severe pain, since Feb. 17, according to a court document filed Wednesday by her attorney, Eric Lee.
Lee says in the document, filed in federal court in the Western District of Texas, that El Gamal was initially denied a CT scan recommended by a doctor at the Dilley Detention Center. A subsequent CT scan conducted when she was taken to the ER found she has fluid around her heart, or pericardial effusion. The emergency room doctor recommended an ultrasound, but DHS, ICE and CoreCivic, which manages Dilley, denied the request, the court filings say.
CoreCivic said in a statement that it couldn’t comment specifically on El Gamal’s case because of ongoing litigation and medical privacy issues.
DHS and ICE didn’t respond to requests for comment on El Gamal’s case and the children’s detention. DHS has previously called allegations about poor care “mainstream media lies” and said parents and children are “housed in facilities that provide for their safety, security and medical needs.”
The agency also has previously said the families have access to full medical staff, including a pediatrician, and it described the care as “the best healthcare” some detainees have received “in their entire lives.”
Lee said he asked three physicians to independently review El Gamal’s medical records. In the court document, they stated that she should receive further testing for cancer, autoimmune disease and cardiac issues, and they raised concerns over her medical condition.
They concluded that ICE and CoreCivic “are systematically denying Ms. El Gamal medical care, but also that this poses an urgent threat to Ms. El Gamal’s health and potentially her life,” according to the documents.
El Gamal and her children, ages 5 to 18, were detained June 3 following the arrest of the children’s father, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, whom El Gamal was married to at the time and has since divorced.
Soliman is charged in connection with a fatal firebomb attack in Colorado and is accused of throwing two Molotov cocktails at demonstrators who were calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza. His family have said they knew nothing of his activities or his plans for them and have condemned his actions. The administration is trying to deport the family.
El Gamal and her children have been at Dilley for more than 10 months, making them the “by far” the family that has been detained there the longest, Lee said. Under court-mandated rules arising from a lawsuit settlement, the government can’t detain children longer than 20 days, a rule the administration repeatedly violates.
Given El Gamal’s health issues, Lee wants the court to reunite her with her oldest daughter, Habiba Soliman, who was separated from her family at the center when she turned 18, so she can care for her younger siblings should El Gamal be hospitalized. Alternatively, he asked for a new court bond hearing.
Lee asked the court at an April 14 meeting to allow the family to be released with ankle monitors — including on the children — as well as daily ICE check-ins. But attorneys for the Department of Homeland Security opposed any release.
The family have made multiple attempts in federal and immigration courts to secure their release. The earliest came after the White House posted on social media: “Six One-Way Tickets For Mohamed’s Wife and Five Kids. Final Boarding Call Coming Soon.” A federal judge stopped their accelerated deportation.
They lost an attempt last year to win release on the argument before a federal court judge that it was illegal to hold them for the alleged crimes of their father and then-husband. Though an immigration judge awarded them bond in September, the Board of Immigration Appeals overturned the ruling. In a second bond hearing, the judge changed his determination that they weren’t flight risks. They are challenging that decision in this latest attempt.
CoreCivic added in its statement that Dilley “has been the target of baseless claims and allegations launched by people who are either misinformed or intentionally misleading the public to advance their agenda.”
It said that its health team includes board-certified physicians and registered nurses who “reflect a commitment to culturally sensitive and patient‑centered care in a setting where families may be navigating trauma, uncertainty, and language barriers” and that “emergency medical services are activated immediately when an individual’s clinical presentation exceeds what can be safely managed on site.”
NBC News asked DHS and ICE for comment on the court filing and the allegations about El Gamal’s medical care but didn’t receive a response.
‘The pain is increasing’
According to Lee, an official ICE or CoreCivic form dated Feb. 21 says El Gamal requested a CT scan on that date. Her follow-up appointment was March 12, but the Dilley doctor told her that “his request for referral to an off-site doctor who could conduct a CT scan was overruled by ‘higher ups’ at either ICE or CoreCivic,” the court documents say.
“Each time Ms. El Gamal made a request for medical attention, the notes state that she was merely ‘reassured,’ given ibuprofen or provided with generic suggestions like ‘prevent dehydration’ and ‘avoid heavy lifting,’” Lee said in the documents.
Lee said on social media that a doctor told El Gamal the lump was a bone. She was denied access to her own medical records and continued to make requests for medical treatment, Lee said in the court document.
She finally was taken to the off-site emergency room on April 9 after having pleaded for about two hours. She rated the pain she was enduring at the time as an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10, the document says.
“Instead of receiving the ultrasound as per her desperate request, Ms. El Gamal was told she had to go back to Dilley. It is not known whether the growth is cancerous, all that is known is that the pain is increasing and that Ms. El Gamal has not received any diagnosis that could lead to proper treatment,” the document says.
Dr. Amy Zeidan, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Emory University School of Medicine who reviewed El Gamal’s medical documents at Lee’s request, stated El Gamal “underwent a CT chest without contrast. A CT chest with contrast would have been the preferred imaging study to evaluate for infection.”
According to court documents, Zeidan also stated the lump is possibly cancer, and she recommended an urgent workup regarding the fluid around her heart and that she receive an echocardiogram and a referral to a cardiologist. She also recommended lab work on her abdominal pain, a referral to a gastroenterologist and an ultrasound of her chest mass.
Dr. Virginia Reddy, a rheumatologist at the North Texas Center for Rheumatology who also reviewed El Gamal’s medical records at Lee’s request, stated according to court documents that because of the fluid around her heart, El Gamal may have an underlying rheumatologic condition and should undergo lab tests for an autoimmune disease such as lupus.
“It is important to diagnose and start treatment as early as possible to reduce the risk of permanent organ damage. If she is found to have lab work or skin lesions suggestive of lupus, she should be referred for urgent evaluation with a rheumatologist,” Reddy wrote. She also expressed concern about a potential “underlying malignancy.”
Dr. Christopher Merrick, chief of the medical staff at the University of Colorado Health Memorial Hospital and a pulmonary medicine expert, suggested after having examined El Gamal’s recent medical history at Lee’s request that she might have a gastric/peptic ulcer disease but has been receiving medications, such as ibuprofen and prednisone, “which will exacerbate any potential underlying ulcerative disease," according to court documents.
“I regret to say Ms. El Gamal has suffered and continues to suffer at the hands of negligent staff at the Dilley facility. Their inaction places her life at risk in a very tangible way,” Merrick wrote.
‘This might be something serious’
Habiba Soliman, El Gamal’s daughter, who was detained in Dilley with her mother and siblings until she turned 18 in June, spoke to NBC News in early March.
She said the family at first held off asking for medical treatment for her mother because they had seen many people with serious illness and medical issues get little to no care at Dilley.
But as things worsened, they began pleading with detention center officials for some kind of medical examination of El Gamal’s lump.
“We said: ‘Please, we need a CAT scan or anything. This might be something serious,’” she said. “They said ‘just do an X-ray’ and the X-ray is literally broken — it’s not even working appropriately.”
Habiba Soliman said a brother, who is 16, had appendicitis in the detention center. After eight hours of pain and being unable to stand, her brother went to the medical center, where he saw a nurse and was told to take Tylenol and come back in three days if he still had pain. Her brother was crying, and, according to Habiba Soliman, he told the nurse he couldn’t walk.
“He walked from her room to the waiting room and then he fell on his knees and threw up all over the place,” Habiba Soliman said. “That’s when they started taking him seriously.”
DHS and ICE haven’t addressed questions about the family’s account of the teen’s appendicitis.
Her brother underwent surgery at a medical facility nearby in July, but when he returned to Dilley, according to her account, “they wanted him to go around and walk from the room to the dining room to the pill line.”
“They wanted someone who has just been in surgery to stand in line for at least two hours, to walk for at least 15 minutes from the room three times a day,” she said, adding that her mother had to fight with at least six people to get medicines and food to his room. “It’s just a bunch of people who don’t care.”
